Peasant Woman from Muscel

Muscel, a hill region north of Bucharest, was known for the richness of its traditional women's dress, and Nicolae Grigorescu returned to that costume again and again. Here a young woman from Muscel stands in her embroidered shirt and head cloth, painted with the loose, light-filled brushwork Grigorescu had brought back from years among the French painters at Barbizon. By the time he made portraits like this he had become the great interpreter of the Romanian peasant, the figure Romanians would later treat as the founder of their modern painting. He was after the ease and dignity of ordinary rural people rather than any ethnographic record. Works like this one, along with his ox carts and village girls, are what made his name at home.